Lakewood is a town divided. Here are the biggest issues.

The clock tower on Clifton Avenue is a fixture in downtown Lakewood. (Len Melisurgo | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Editor's note, Part 5: In a nine-day series of stories, NJ Advance Media is taking a closer look at Lakewood, one of New Jersey's fastest-growing and most complex towns.Lakewood is home to a huge Orthodox Jewish community and the rapid growth has engulfed the town, igniting tensions between the religious and secular societies on many levels. Each day, we will explore some of the major issues in the community, including the welfare fraud investigation, housing problems and the strains on the education system.

By Len Melisurgo and Michael Sol Warren

If you look beyond the headlines in Lakewood, you see a town dealing with a unique set of issues, and if you look closely enough you can also see the intricate fault lines that deeply splinter one of the fastest-growing towns in the state.

Meanwhile, Lakewood's public schools are faced with ever tougher choices as the school district struggles to balance its needs with the obligation to pay for the transportation of about 30,000 township children who attend more than 130 private schools within the town's borders.

We asked the leaders of Lakewood about the most significant issues and to suggest solutions. Here's what they had to say.

diicol lakewood

Rabbi Aaron Kotler (David Gard | For NJ Advance Media)

Rabbi Aaron Kotler

Rabbi Aaron Kotler is the chief executive officer of Beth Medrash Govoha, the Lakewood yeshiva that is more commonly referred to as BMG. Founded by Kotler's grandfather, BMG is the largest yeshiva in the United States and serves as the primary draw for Orthodox Jews moving to Lakewood. BMG's student body currently numbers about 6,500, and the school attracts students from around the globe. Students attending BMG are eligible for federal student aid like Pell Grants.

For Rabbi Kotler, the most pressing issue facing Lakewood is what he and many other local leaders see as woefully inadequate amount of state funding for the township school district. This places an unfair burden on Lakewood and fuels big budget deficits for the district, he said.

“I think the state aid formula for the public school districts did not anticipate a municipality like Lakewood. It did not anticipate a municipality like Passaic, or Clifton, or Toms River or Jackson, or Howell or Brick,” Kotler said during a recent interview. Lakewood receives state aid for the roughly 6,000 students who attend the public schools but spends a large amount of money on busing more for more than 30,000 students.

"The formula is defective,” he said. “They never anticipated that there would be communities that don’t fit the same model as the majority of communities do. I think that drives budget deficits for the (Lakewood) school district. To me, that’s the number one problem.”

The best solution, Kotler said, is to allocate more state funding for Lakewood’s public school district, “which would result in better outcomes for public school kids. It would also make Lakewood a place where you wouldn’t have people feeling that your children’s future is at risk due to a budget problem.”

Morales is the leader of Voz Latina, a Lakewood organization that advocates for the town's Hispanic community. According to Morales, as much as 95 percent of Lakewood's Hispanic population may be undocumented. She is also the mother of two Lakewood High School students and says she is deeply concerned about what she sees as the declining quality of education in the public school system.